Olympic Torch Relay

The torch came to Inverness on Saturday early evening bringing Draconian parking restrictions. Yesterday it went north to John o'Groats (horrible disappointing place) and to Orkney. I can't pretend to be very enthused by this whole Olympic junket but decided to go and watch the flame leave Inverness at the start of its journey south. Managed to park behind a police van very close to my chosen viewing point before realising it was "permit holders only", but decided traffic wardens and police would be too busy to worry about minor infringements. Indeed too busy even to note a large gun on a small rise trained on the route the flame would take. Took some shots of the "crowd" - there were quite a few people around but nothing like enough to be oppressive. Not a crush by any standard. Got a few pictures of the spectators and of the people with the convoy. I was able to look down to the Castle where the relay was to start and again quite a few people but not too bad. I have a feeling today's event got less publicity than Saturday's. Managed a few shots of the man carrying the flame - it's quite a steep hill so I didn't envy him having to make at least a show of running. For anyone interested the are shots of the wider scene of the event on Flickr .
I was able to make a quick getaway by doing a U-turn and taking another route to Inshes but I was congratulating my road sense too soon as on the southern distributor road I had to push into a continuous stream of traffic coming from Rockness Pop Festival. It was moving very slowly because further along the road ran into the torch route. I was behind a large lorry ("Big Green Parcel Machine") when I turned off to go the Inshes Post Office and get bread. 20 minutes later I could see the same lorry just slowly moving towards the bridge over the A9. Going home against the flow was fine. By the way the 'large gun' I mentioned is an old cannon in front of the house I always think of as "the observatory". It's visible in one of the pictures in the link.